Case Number 05511

LAW AND ORDER: THE FOURTEENTH YEAR

The Charge

Dun-DAAAAAAH!

Opening Statement

Law & Order: The Fourteenth Season? No, you didn't sleep through
the last 12 seasons. Universal has eschewed traditional DVD release schedules
and jumped straight into Season Fourteen of the longest-running show on network
television today, which you can now take home on DVD...err...today.

And you absolutely should. Chronological order, shmorder, I say.

Facts of the Case

It is not an easy thing to provide a plot synopsis for a Law &
Order episode without giving away the ending in completion, since the show
never, ever ends up in the same place it started. So I submit for your viewing
consumption the "Generic Law & Order Episode":

The police discover a body. They start making the rounds, ask some
questions, and eventually track down a suspect or two. After some questioning,
they find a bit of evidence that incriminates the most likely suspect, and so
they arrest him or her. After some interrogation, the person usually confesses
to the killing, seconds before his lawyer bursts into the police station with a
motion to dismiss everything. Tag off to the lawyers, who begin the long
courtroom procedure to grill the heck out of the witnesses. Just when it seems
that every bit of evidence the police have gathered will be thrown out of court
during the trial, they suddenly realize they have charged the wrong person with
the crime. Then, in a tearful confession behind closed doors, it turns out to be
the mother.

It always turns out to be the mother. Trust me.

Repeat this formula for 14 years, and amazingly enough, it keeps getting
better and better. All 24 episodes from the 14th season of Law &
Order are included on this DVD, spread over three discs.

Disc One

* "Bodies" A young lawyer trying to defend a serial killer
ends up privy to the location of dozens of his client's victims. Out of
principle, the attorney refuses to disclose the corpses' location. You can bet
this doesn't go over well with the neighborhood association.

* "Bounty" A bounty hunter shows up in town on the trail of
an upper-class rapist and murderer, tipped off by an interview published by an
adventurous reporter who secured a phone interview with the killer. But when the
bounty hunter is found dead in a hotel room, the reporter suddenly becomes the
one answering the hard questions.

* "Patient Zero" A woman gets her SUV hijacked, and is left
dead in the street. When the police recover the SUV, they find a hazardous
material box in the trunk, chock full of the corona virus...otherwise known as
SARS. Then, when the hospitals start flooding with the infected, things start to
get...interesting.

* "Shrunk" When a woman is found murdered at the home of an
award-winning, reclusive songwriter, the police spring into action. But the
singer himself suffers from extreme emotional issues, and has barely left the
house in years, except on his psychiatrist's approval. The mystery! Ooh!

* "Blaze" A heavy-metal band's pyrotechnics burn a nightclub
to the ground, killing 23 fans. The police have more than getting an autograph
on their mind when they take the band into custody for murder.

* "Identity" When an elderly man is persuaded into selling
his home for $400,000, his family is confused when he gives every cent of the
money to a complete stranger. Imagine how confused the police feel when this
unknown man winds up with bullets in his chest.

* "Floater" A woman floats to the surface of the Hudson
River, and the police spring into action. But when the DA's office goes digging
through the details, they notice a connection between the deceased's attorney
and a particular judge that smells awfully fishy...no pun intended.

* "Embedded" When an overzealous reporter travels to Iraq
and broadcasts on national television the movements of the soldiers with whom he
is traveling, he suffers some "negative feedback" when his troop is
attacked and the soldiers killed by insurgents. Then, when the reporter is shot
and wounded outside a nightclub in New York, the police are left to unravel the
mystery of how one of the dead soldiers' guns wound up being used in the
crime.

Disc Two

* "Compassion" An embezzling con man reinvents himself as a
faith healer who claims he can talk to the dead. When he unexpectedly joins
their ranks, the police and district attorney must figure out the motivations of
his killing.

* "Ill-Conceived" After the owner of a pseudo-sweatshop
clothing company winds up dead in his own factory, the police start interviewing
the immigrant workers he employed, looking for a suspect. When the trail leads
to a young man and his pregnant wife, things unravel like a thread in a cheap
garment.

* "Darwinian" When a fancy sports car strikes a homeless
man, the young socialite at the wheel drives into her garage, leaving the man
struggling on her fender to die. The police take one look at the scene, and
declare a field day.

* "Payback" When mob bookies mix with legitimate
businessmen, it can only lead to trouble for the police and the DA, especially
when Federal government agents step in and throws their weight around.

* "Married with Children" When a woman falls from a hotel
balcony, the police comfort the sister of the bereaved and the victim's small
child. However, when they find out the decedent had no sister, they go back to
the house to find the mystery woman and the widow's child have vanished...

* "City Hall" Bureaucracy can be deadly. An angry
shopkeeper, an erroneous water bill, and some nasty coincidences culminate in a
shooting, leaving a lot of dead people strewn over the steps of City Hall.

* "Veterans' Day" When a young left-wing protester ends up
dead, the police turn to a grief-stricken, warhawk father who lost his son in
Afghanistan as the likely shooter. But when the defense cites extreme emotional
distress as the justification for the shooting, the DAs have their work cut out
for them.

* "Can I Get A Witness?" Drug lords, murders, and mules...oh
my!

Disc Three

* "Hands Free" EADA McCoy takes things personally as he goes
after a cross-dressing serial killer who manages twice to evade murder charges:
the first time for killing his wife, the second time for killing a neighbor. But
the third time, McCoy determines to make the charge stick!

* "Evil Breeds" An old woman is killed in her house, the
apparent subject of a break-in. But when the police discover the woman was a
Holocaust survivor, set to testify against her concentration-camp tormenter in a
deportation case, the trail leads to a Neo-Nazi record label. Hilarity
ensues.

* "Nowhere Man" When an ADA is found murdered on the street,
the District Attorney's office goes into hysterics, shocked at the death of one
of their own. However, the further they dig into the life of the deceased, the
less they realize they know about the man...

* "Everybody Loves Raimondo's" When a wannabe mobster writes
a tell-all book about a life of crime, then flaunts his face around a popular
mob hangout for criminals and celebrities alike, tempers flare, and people end
up dead.

* "Vendetta" When a baseball fan catches an in-play ball
that ruins the home team's chance at a championship, he becomes the most hated
man in the city. Then, when he ends up dead in a barroom brawl, the police have
a rather large suspect list to narrow down...about thirty million people!

* "Gaijin" A famous Japanese couple visiting as tourists get
accosted and mugged on the streets of New York. The wife is killed in the
struggle. But when the husband returns home to Japan, reporting that NYC is
overrun with murderers and black people with guns, and the government of Japan
advises travelers from visiting the city...the police are desperate to bring the
killer to justice and clear the city's name.

* "Caviar Emptor" A caviar baron is murdered the day after
his wedding to a trophy wife. Hmm. Tough one.

* "C.O.D." Two women, two husbands. That is, two dead
husbands. The police have their hands full when they can't prove either woman
murdered her husband...until they start thinking outside the box.

The Evidence

Fourteen seasons later, Law & Order is still exceptionally
satisfying in a way that is the envy of all other shows. Most series struggle
season after season to keep their viewers stimulated, to keep them from
wandering off. In terms of storylines, production, and direction, there has
hardly been any innovation in Law & Order at all since its inception.
It still follows the same steadfast formula every week that it began with in
1990. When you go flipping through the channels, and you hear that light-jazz
theme song, be it a new episode or a decade-old rerun, you know exactly what to
expect. It is comforting in a way that few shows have ever had the opportunity
to become.

Perhaps the show's extraordinary longevity can be attributed to its keen
newsworthy eye. Especially in later seasons, the show pays extreme attention to
current political and social news, and manages to quickly encapsulate the
headlines into its storylines with shocking speed. This is not a cheap gimmick,
mind you; rather, the show simply exists in the same world that we live in on a
daily basis, constantly adjusting the new social, political, and legal issues
that the city of New York faces in a post-9/11 world. A Geraldo-lookalike
reporter is attacked on the streets after traveling to Iraq and revealing his
unit's troop movements on national television, inviting insurgents to attack
their position. A rock band's pyrotechnics burns down a local nightclub, killing
23 concertgoers. A well-to-do socialite accidentally hits a homeless man with
her sports car, then parks in her garage and leaves the man to die on her car
windshield. A baseball fan catches a ball in play and ruins the home team's
chance at the championship, making him the most hated man in the entire city,
and the target of thousands of death threats. These events are all taken
straight from the headlines, but they become mere backdrops to the evolving
storylines. The show uses these events as jumping-off points to tell its own
stories, to weave its own plots, and thus manages to stay both original and
culturally relevant at the same time. This is a trick at which the producers and
writers of Law & Order have become exceptionally good, and it serves
the show well.

Above all else, Law & Order is a show about New York City, about
the citizens and the lawmakers and the police officers, and it churns up and
down according to the whim of the city. Some of the more interesting episodes in
this 14th season find the Law & Order gang dealing with the
ever-changing legal and privacy rights as a result of the September 11th
tragedy. Even the two Law & Order spin-off shows singularly represent
the city of New York in spirit and attitude. Unlike its CBS rival franchise
CSI, which sees fit to transplant its spin-offs into numerous locales,
one cannot imagine Law & Order working in any city other than New
York. The city is the most integral cast member of the show -- its presence can
be felt in every scene, every character, every bit of dialogue, and every
resolution.

And hey, in terms of cast members, New York is as cool as they come. The
city rubs off on the show.

Law & Order takes a very unique approach to character
development, chucking the entire notion of it in the dustbin. For the casual
fan, the show appears to have absolutely nothing in the way of personal
character development at all. However, Law & Order rewards its
longtime fans with slow and subtle character developments over entire seasons of
episodes -- you have to log a lot of hours to pick up the little details and the
tiny references. This unique formula undoubtedly manifests itself in the show's
overwhelming success and popularity over the years; it allows cast members to be
easily replaced, and for personal development to be completely sidestepped, to
focus solely on the drama, the story, the formula of the show. And hey, you
can't argue with success.

With such a rock-solid and steadfast premise, not surprisingly, the most
drastic changes to the show usually involve cast replacements. The 14th season
marks the departure of the longest-running cast member, Jerry Orbach, ending his
incredible 12-season run on Law & Order in order to take long walks
in the rain, go fishing, take up macramé, and...go work on another Law
& Order show, the new spin-off Law & Order: Trial By Jury,
which is set to debut in January 2005, where it will no doubt be cancelled for a
midseason replacement in the year 2037.

All 24 episodes fit nicely onto three double-sided DVDs (a.k.a.
"flippers"), which make sense from a packaging point of view, but
which I always find slightly nerve-wracking to negotiate out of the case and
into the player. I feel as though if I drop one of these delicate suckers, it's
all over. But in terms of the production values on the DVDs themselves, they are
second to none. Menus are slick, efficient, and easy to navigate, and much
credit should go to the subtitles, which are grammatically and linguistically
perfect, with absolutely no omitted words or truncated sentences. Their position
jumps around a lot, constantly moving about the frame to indicate which
character is saying which sequence of lines; certainly not an original trick,
but it begs the question why all subtitling is not done in this fashion. Simply
put, these subtitles rule.

In terms of audio and video, these are some handsome looking and sounding
DVDs. By the time the 14th season rolled around, the production values for audio
and sound on Law & Order were impeccable, and these DVDs reflect it.
The transfer is clear, crisp, and incredibly detailed, with great black levels
and no sign of digital defects, anti-aliasing, or jagged edges. The transfer is
immaculate, with nary an imperfection to be seen. I have seen mention of other
people complaining about a peculiar white line plaguing the bottom of the frame
when watching these DVDs, but I failed to notice anything of the sort. All I
noticed was one of the best-looking television-to-DVD transfers I have ever had
the pleasure of watching. As far as sound goes, the soundtrack may only be Dolby
Digital 2.0, but this is as tight as 2.0 tracks come, my friend. Incredibly
expansive, fantastic bass response, fantastic ambient noise detail and
resolution, crystal-clear dialogue...if every 2.0 track were like this, we'd
have no need for surround tracks.

Extras are on par with other TV DVD box sets, comprised of two interviews
and two character profiles. The feature "Set Tour with Jerry Orbach"
takes us behind the scenes to visit the set, with Jerry as our guide. For fans
of the show, this will undoubtedly be compelling, since the entire courtroom,
office, police station, and jail sequences are filmed on modular studio sets,
and having the illusion broken is always a trip. A small interview (which feels
more like a PR video) of Park Dietz, mental illness consultant for the show,
takes us into the intrinsic research that goes into making the bad guys
authentically loco. Though there isn't much here to get excited about,
behind-the-scenes looks are always a nice touch.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

Too bad this DVD commits the most irritating of television DVD faux pas and
fails to place chapter stops that enable the viewer to skip the opening credits.
Let's face it: after 14 seasons of the Law & Order theme song, I'm
ready to skip it. The chapter stops -- four per episode -- seem to be inserted
into random points during the episode, rather than at the commercial breaks.

Whew, I'm glad I got that off my case, because it was eating me up
inside...oh, wait...no it wasn't. If that's the only thing I have to gripe
about, then these must be some fine DVDs indeed. I had to think hard to come up
with anything bad to say about them.

Universal's schedule of releasing Law & Order on DVD has confused
many and been the subject of countless discussions, since at the time of this
publication, the first, second and fourteenth seasons are available on DVD.
Likewise, with the spin-off shows Criminal Intent and Special Victims
Unit, the DVDs are coming out in seemingly random order. Now, whether this
reflects some sort of carefully thought-out marketing scheme by Universal, or
whether the head of product development is numerically dyslexic, it remains to
be seen. But let's face it: any season of Law & Order on DVD is a
good thing, order be damned.

Closing Statement

Law & Order has a universal (no pun intended) appeal and longevity
that approaches the unearthly. Fourteen seasons later, the show still feels as
fresh, innovative, and engrossing as the day it first aired, despite the
plethora of copycats flooding the airwaves. For me personally, Law &
Order is one of the few shows that no matter what, I can turn it on and be
entertained without fail, one hundred percent of the time.

Despite the almost constant barrage of Season Fourteen reruns available at
the turn of a television dial, it is hard not to recommend Law & Order:
The Fourteenth Season -- great picture, great sound, great story, great
drama; this is everything a television DVD box set should be. Sure, you can
watch the same episodes every night on TV for free, but you wouldn't be reading
this review if you didn't like buying DVDs, now would you? And rest assured,
this DVD set magnificently captures one of the finest television shows in
history just hitting its stride at age 14, years past the point when every other
show of its era has been cancelled.

Believe me, there are worse things you could be spending your money on. And
hey, in another five years, Law & Order will catch up with
Gunsmoke as the longest-running TV drama in history.

I say, keep 'em comin', pardner.

The Verdict

Has there ever there been a TV show on DVD more appropriate for this site to
pass a verdict on?